


Foul

by ishafel



Series: Sport of Queens [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3683556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when you think you understand the game, they change the rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foul

The tabs said afterward that he was drunk, suicidal because of his forced coming out and his marriage ending, pumped full of performance enhancing charms, even that he must have AIDS. But the truth was dull by comparison: Draco was tired, hot, and miserable, and he misjudged the dive. He knew even before it began to go wrong; he had his hands up when he landed and it was the only thing that saved him.

He hit hard and rolled, and something in his shoulder cracked. The pain was immense, immediate, so much so that he blacked out for a moment. “Does it look like his neck’s broken?”, someone asked. It sounded like Oliver Wood.

“His shoulder’s definitely dislocated,” Peter Jones, the British coach, said. “If he doesn’t have a concussion and he gets it put back in without painkillers, he might still be able to play Friday.”

“Fuck you both,” Draco said, very carefully not moving his head or opening his eyes. “I want an actual mediwizard putting it back, not a trainer or a Muggle veterinarian. And at least eighteen Advil, if I can’t have real pain potions.”

He was sick when they moved him to strap his arm for transport to the hospital. Concussed too, then, for sure. It didn’t matter; his shoulder was more or less wrecked. His quidditch career was pretty much wrecked. His life was pretty much wrecked.

Pansy got him a private room and the best surgeon in London. He had one more season left on his Hornets contract and insurance, so he might as well make the most of it. They took him into surgery on Wednesday morning, three hours after he was supposed to have Flooed to Tokyo with the team. The British team’s shot was pretty much wrecked, too.

Draco tried not to think too hard about any of it. He attempted a smile for his parents when they came to see him just before he went into surgery, and knew from the look on Narcissa’s face it hadn’t been very convincing. He grabbed Pansy’s arm as they wheeled him out for surgery. “Look out for Astoria and Scorpius for me if I die,” he said. “And Lucius and Narcissa, too.”

“You’re not going to die, halfwit,” she snapped, and then, clearly feeling guilty: “but of course I would, darling, you know that.”

He woke up slowly, lightheaded and sick. There was someone by the window: a man, broad-shouldered and fair-haired. “Serge?”, Draco asked, squinting against the fluorescent light. The shape came closer and resolved into his father, frowning down at him. “Sorry,” he said, “I thought--.” Talking was a mistake. He swallowed hard, and Lucius shoved a bowl under his chin.

The next few minutes were unpleasant. His shoulder didn’t exactly hurt, but it was strapped and his arm was in a sling and his head felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. Lucius brought him water to rinse out his mouth and charmed away the mess the way he had when Draco was small. It was embarrassing and oddly comforting. Narcissa’s love had always been as deep and fierce as the sea, and as impractical; Lucius was the one who doctored his scrapes and sat on the bathroom floor and read to him when he was sick. “Sorry,” he said again.

Lucius grinned at him. “I’d ask how you feel, but it’s pretty obvious. They said your surgery went well, though.” He touched Draco’s forehead with a cool hand, the universal gesture of helpless parents. “Sergei’s in China by now, for the World Cup. Greg said he’d track him down and tell him what happened.”

Lucius had always hated Serge, and was undoubtedly dying to say something really unpleasant about him. Draco appreciated his restraint, although he wondered how bad he must look for Lucius to bother. “That’s okay,” he said. “Sergei made his choice. It wasn’t  
me.”

“I always knew he was an asshole,” Lucius said, reverting to form. “He never looked me in the eye.”

Draco would have smiled if he’d had the energy. “You mentioned that before,” he said. “A few times.”

Lucius made a face. “You should have listened, then. I’m going to call your mother and tell her you’re properly awake. She was making everyone in the waiting room nervous, so I made her go home to take the dog out and get the book she needed for her article and wouldn’t admit she’d forgotten.”

Draco did smile a little, then. “She hates waiting, I know.”

“I’ll send the nurse in,” his father said. “They want to take your temperature and that sort of thing, I’m sure--.” Draco was asleep again before he finished the sentence.

The rest of the day and most of the night were a blur; he felt as if they came in every five minutes to check his pupils or his pulse or ask him the Minister of Magic’s name. And then he woke up, clear-headed and almost pain-free, sometime in the early hours of the morning. His room was dim and quiet, and Pansy had transfigured the chair beside his bed into a chaise lounge and was curled under her jacket, sleeping peacefully.

Draco listened to her soft, regular breathing. They’d spent a lot of nights in this hospital, over the years: head injuries and broken bones on the quidditch field for he and Greg, Scorpius’s birth, Malcolm Baddock’s variety of overdosings and stomach pumpings, Millicient’s botched abortion, Pansy’s two suicide attempts, the night Padma’s boyfriend rode his motorbike into the back of a lorry. They were all such fuckups, and it was all his fault.

He wanted, suddenly and desperately, to shake Pan awake and check the long-healed scars on her arms. He couldn’t reach, though, with the IV in the back of his free hand. And she would have killed him, if he had; she’d always been a complete bitch in the mornings.

Draco’s mobile was on the nightstand next to the bed, and after some careful and agonizing wriggling he managed to pick it up. There were flowers, too-- actually now that he looked there were a lot of flowers and balloons and potted plants-- but these had a card that read, once he got hold of it, “I love you Dad and I hope you feel better soon,” in Scorpius’s careful, uneven printing, as well as “Be well,” in Astoria’s untidy scrawl, signed with the familiar A.

He’d been such a shit to her. She’d gained two stone when Scorpius was born and never lost it, had always worried about not being as thin and fit as the other players’ wives and girlfriends. He’d always thought she was beautiful, smart and funny and kind, generous in  
bed and out of it. She just hadn’t been a man.

He checked his mobile. There were three dozen texts and a dozen missed calls and messages. None of them were from Serge. Draco’d been a fuck to him, nothing more, a convenient hole to drill until he suddenly got un-convenient.

It hurt less than he’d expected. He hadn’t loved Serge, hadn’t expected what they had to last forever. And he couldn’t really blame Serge for bolting, either; Draco would have bolted himself if he’d had anywhere to go. For a moment he thought about it. Not Russia, but  
somewhere with white sand and blue skies, where no one he knew would find him.

He checked Q.E.D.’s site, mostly out of habit, and saw that the Hornets had dropped him for violating the reckless endangerment clause of his contract and that Astoria had filed for divorce the day he’d been injured. It was Ron Weasley’s hard hitting investigative  
journalism, according to the by-line, because of course it was. That did hurt, especially because he knew it had been someone in the Hornets’ organization-- maybe even one of his teammates-- who’d shopped him to the tabs in the first place. Probably only because even Q.E.D. had too much journalistic integrity to break the story without a shred of evidence.

Draco’s phone made the shrill, horrified sound it always made just before he fried it, and he dropped it hastily. It was too late-- not for the phone, but for Pansy, who dropped her jacket on the floor and sat up.

“Sorry,” Draco said guiltily.

“Why? Are you going to throw up again? Lucius went home for the night, but I can get a nurse--,” Pansy was three quarters of the way across the room before he managed to stop her.

“It’s fine, Pansy, honestly. It was just my phone.”

“Did you magic another one to death? I’m not sure your warranty’s going to cover it.” She came back, though, and stood next to him. “You look like shit, Malfoy.”

“Thanks,” Draco said. “That’s sweet. Do you have my divorce paperwork with you? A letter from the Hornets about how they’re dropping me for being wounded in service to my country?”

“Wow, you’re going there already, and it’s only--,” Pansy checked her mobile, which she had, yet again, fallen asleep holding, “--three a.m. Well done. I think I like you better incoherent and vomiting.”

“I’m sure I liked you better then, too.” Draco leaned back against the headboard, which turned out to be a mistake. “Fine. How long am I stuck here anyway?”

“They said probably tomorrow, but the doctor’s supposed to re-evaluate you during rounds. She dropped an envelope on the bed. “Astoria wants half of everything in your joint accounts, the Land Rover, and shared custody of Scorpius, which seems pretty reasonable given the circumstances. The Hornets want you out, and you can either settle now or be straight up fired when you aren’t ready for practice in two weeks. Which you won’t be, even if your shoulder wasn’t an issue, because your head injury was severe enough they won’t let you on a broom for a month.”

She sighed, and touched his arm with a gentleness he didn’t often see from her. “Look, Draco, you’re thirty-five. This is a career-ending injury. Time to face it and figure out what you’re doing next.”

“I can’t,” Draco said, panicking, “Pansy. I never took the N.E.W.T.s, you know that. I’m not qualified to do anything but play quidditch. I’m unemployable. I’ll have to move back in with Lucius and Narcissa and take up vegetable gardening and you know I hate vegetables.”

“You don’t have to be such a drama queen,” Pansy said.

“You have no idea how much of a queen I can be,” Draco said crossly.

Pansy started to laugh. “We wouldn’t be here if you weren’t a huge queen.”

Once upon a time he would have panicked just hearing her say it in a public place. But now-- now everyone knew. He’d been so careful, for so long, and now it was over. “I’m gay,” he said. He’d only said it out loud once before, to his father, and he’d been completely  
shit-faced. “I think maybe you have brain damage after all,” Pansy said from beside him.

“No more so than usual, I promise.” He grinned at her, putting all the old Malfoy charm into it.

It didn’t work on her; it never had. He sometimes thought that he should have married her instead of Astoria, because she would never have fallen in love with him, never have believed any of the lies he’d told her or himself, never been hurt the way he knew he’d hurt Astoria. Pansy hadn’t loved anyone since Vince, and Draco was beginning to think she never would.

Instead of melting at his beauty, she scowled at him. “You’ve been gay as long as I’ve known you. Remember when you had that crush on Viktor Krum in fourth year?”

“I admired him, that’s all,” Draco said with as much dignity as he could muster. “He was the Seeker for the Bulgarian National Federation when he was seventeen--.”

“Okay, first, he was closer to twenty-four than seventeen, the Bulgarians lied for years to get older players on their teams for Juniors, and second, he was practically naked on that poster in your bedroom, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his playing you admired. Viktor Krum is approximately half the reason you’re gay-- and obviously you like them grim and Slavic-- although I admit you did a hell of job keeping it a secret until Serge started getting into your trousers. You might have gotten away with it forever, if Ron Weasley hadn’t hated you enough to pay for dirt on you.”

“You think it was the Weasel, too, then?”

Pansy yawned delicately, and then smiled at him. “Isn’t it always the Weasel? It wasn’t that exciting a secret, darling, I don’t think anyone else would have bothered, because no one else hates you that much. It isn’t as if they had photos, or even real proof. If Serge had stuck it out you would have been able to deny it and things would never have gone this far.”

“Yeah,” Draco said. “If Serge had stuck it out.” Because actually it did hurt, when he let himself think about it. Serge had been one of the few people he’d met since the war who hadn’t cared about the past, hadn’t treated Draco differently because of the Mark. He hadn’t  
been much of a lover, but he’d been Draco’s friend.

“You really think I’ll never play quidditch again?” he asked, and Pansy sighed.

“You have exactly one offer,” she said. “A three-year contract, and they want you and Greg both.”

“So--,”.

“Let me finish. It pays less than your Hornets contract-- substantially less-- it comes with a lot of conditions, and it’s the Cannons.”

“Oh,” Draco said. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” Pansy said. “I did try.” She handed him the letter detailing the Cannons’ offer. “There were a few from outside England, mostly overseas, but nothing worthwhile.”

The Cannons’ GM’s handwriting was terrible. Draco squinted thoughtfully at it. “Is there anything actually impossible to live with in this?”

“You need reading glasses,” Pansy said. “We’re so old.”

“I absolutely do not need reading glasses. I have a traumatic brain injury, the lighting is bad, and her handwriting is terrible.”

“Of course it is. No, it’s obnoxiously specific about certain things, but not impossible. But they’re the worst team in the league, Draco. They won one game last season and that was on a techncality.”

“I’m in if Greg is,” Draco said. “It will be a challenge. And more importantly, it’ll buy me time to figure out how to pay Scorpius’s school fees.”

“I guess you really didn’t listen to my lecture about saving up.”

“I spent it on the new furnace for the Manor,” Draco pointed out. “Well, and the Land Rover, and skiing in Gstaad over Christmas and renting the place in Spain every summer.”

“I know what you spent it on,” Pansy said, yawning again. “I was kidding.”

“I thought I’d have more time. I didn’t think I’d be washed up at thirty-five.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t say he wasn’t washed up at thirty-five. “I want to come out,” Draco said, “Is there anything in the contract about that?”

It was Pansy’s turn to squint. “I don’t think you really do want to do that. Right now people just think you’re weird and immoral and Pureblood. If you announce that you’re gay-- there’s no coming back from that.”

“I’m not going to change my mind about it at this point.”

“It’s going to be a big deal,” Pansy said quietly. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“I know. But I think-- maybe it’s time someone did it, and maybe it should be me.”

“Then I think that would be great,” Pansy said, and smiled at him. “Really great. Now, since it’s still only four a.m., do you mind if I go back to sleep?”

“No,” Draco said. “But isn’t that thing miserable to sleep on? Come here.”

Pansy crawled carefully into the bed on his good side, and curled against him. She didn’t have any of Astoria’s softness, but she was warm and smelled faintly of vanilla and he felt infinitely better having her there. “This being gay thing is going to be an amazing way to get women into bed with me,” he said, and she laughed.

They were both asleep when the surgeon came in a few hours later. She looked a little scandalized when Pansy had to detangle herself from Draco’s IV line. “Mr. Malfoy, this really is against hospital policy,” she began, and Draco shifted uncomfortably, preparing to do his  
best to charm her. The potion they’d given him earlier had worn off and his shoulder had settled into a dull, aching throb, infinitely preferable to the sharp agony of pre- surgery but still unpleasant.

“Sorry,” he said, “Pansy looked so uncomfortable I took pity on her.”

The doctor didn’t quite grin back at him, but she softened a little. “Don’t do it again,” she said, checking his pulse and spelling the tape on his bandages loose. “Your surgery went well, and your incision is healing nicely. And we have the preliminary results of your STI tests-- you’ll be glad to hear that they were all clean. We should have the results of the HIV test back tomorrow.”

“I came in with a separated shoulder,” Draco said, “Sexually transmitted infections weren’t really a huge concern. Why--.” But he knew, of course. “You tested me because--.”

“Because of your sexual history, Mr. Malfoy,” the doctor said, blushing and earnest. “It’s standard.”

“It wasn’t standard last time when I came in for stitches,” Draco snapped, “but I guess given that now that you know from the tabloids that I’ve slept with a whole two people in the last twelve years, it’s obvious I’m promiscuous and the test I get every year for the team’s  
insurance physical is no longer sufficient.”

“Don’t say anything else, Draco,” Pansy interrupted. “You don’t want to compromise the lawsuit.”

The doctor bolted. “That’s how it’s going to be,” Pansy said, “only worse. So I want you to be sure before you make a big public statement you can’t take back.”

Moral fortitude had never really been Draco’s strong point. It was very tempting to change his mind. If he’d done the right thing instead of the easy thing at sixteen, would it have mattered? Or would his parents be dead instead of his friends? No one’s life was on the line today; this was important to him and no one else. And yet-- he thought of Scorpius, who was old enough to ask awkward questions about the war, whose father was a washed-up quidditch player who would be remembered mostly as just another Pureblood sexual deviant. No one remembered Aberforth Dumbledore as a war hero, after all.

“Press conference,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “No. Make it an exclusive interview. But not with Q.E.D.-- nothing for them until the Weasel is fired. Which is the next thing on the list.”

“Is there time for me to pee first?”, Pansy asked, with slightly more attitude than Draco felt was merited.

“By all means,” he said. While she was gone he carefully wiggled the IV needle out of his hand using his teeth. Thank fuck they hadn’t catheterized him, at least; he didn’t really want to take that out one-handed and he was pretty sure Pansy’s friendship didn’t extend that far. The thought of the hospital staff touching him, knowing what they thought of him, made him cringe a little. He wanted to go home, and not to the house he’d shared with his wife and son but to big, sunny Malfoy Manor and his childhood bedroom and its ceiling painted with stars. He wanted to be ten again, in a world in which the Dark Lord was still dead, and sex was still something grownups did. When he was ten he and Vince and Greg had built a fort out of blankets and pretended to be Aurors on the run from Grindelwald.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating trying to stand up, when Pansy came out of the bathroom. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she said when she saw him. “Are we really doing this?”

But his misery must have showed on his face, because she produced a bag of clothes and helped him into track bottoms and a buttondown shirt that at least covered the bandages on his shoulder. “Very sharp, darling.”

The trek out wasn’t as bad as Draco had expected. Apart from his shoulder, which was going to hurt like a bitch when the drugs wore off, he actually felt quite well. They met his parents in the hallway. “Going somewhere?”, Lucius asked him dryly.

“There’s no television in my room. How can I stay if I can’t watch the game?”

“We’re checking out,” Pansy said. “It’s complicated, but probably for the best. Actually, if you take Draco, I’ll handle the paperwork.”

“Of course,” Narcissa said, as if she were accepting a package. “It’s probably best if we take him to the Manor for a bit anyway. The television there is in perfect working order.”

Draco glared at her and she grinned. “You do look a bit more yourself this morning.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Let’s go.” In the end, Lucius cast Invisiblare, and they walked out without any trouble at all.

In the street, Draco stopped for a moment, turning his face up to the morning sun. It felt as if he’d been in St. Mungo’s for a great deal longer than three days. “I’m going to come out publicly,” he said, and opened his eyes, squinting to see his parents’ reactions. They didn’t look thrilled, but they didn’t look horrified either. He guessed it wasn’t like he could really do more damage to the Malfoy name at this point.

“If you’re sure that’s what you want,” his mother said finally. Lucius didn’t meet Draco’s eyes, but he touched his good shoulder gently.

“Well,” Narcissa said. “I do have something that I expect will cheer you up. It arrived this morning by owl post.” She started to hand it to him, thought better of it, and cracked the seal and unfolded it for him.

“Remember, there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” it read. “I’ll be in London at the end of the month if you fancy a drink.” It was from Blaise Zabini. Draco stared at the curving B, the bold slash of the Z, thinking of the time at Hogwarts when Blaise had sucked him off in the shower after a quidditch match in fifth year. Blaise was an even bigger reason to be gay than Viktor Krum.

He shoved the note into his pocket. Blaise could be fun. Maybe it would all work out. For the first time since he’d slunk home to confess to Astoria, he felt a glimmer of hope. “So, let’s go,” he said to Lucius and Narcissa, “I wasn’t kidding about watching the England game."


End file.
